First Glance: the Continued Chronicles of Hogwarts
by Cloud Wolfe
Summary: Evangeline Black just wanted to learn magic & make a few friends. Due to a stupid mistake, no one likes her. She's the butt of everyone's jokes, her things are stolen, even the ghosts go out of their way to torment her. And it's only her first week.
1. Prologue

Prologue

"We have to leave England," Regulus Black said flatly. "It's not safe for us here anymore."

"But were will we go?" Selene Debreuil asked desperately. "Your family would disown you if they knew about what you've done, and my parents are dead."

"You have family in France, don't you? An aunt?" Regulus took Selene's hand and held it in his, hoping to convince and reassure her. "We can go to her, at least until we can get our own place. I have money, we can buy a little house… but we can't stay here. The Dark Lord will find me, and he'll kill me. We _have_ to leave."

"I haven't seen my father's sister in years," Selene argued halfheartedly. "For all we know, she'll kick us straight out. Her and my father weren't on the best of terms."

"I know, and I'm sorry that it has to come to this. But you don't understand. The Dark Lord cannot allow his Death Eaters to quit. Leaving is a death sentence, unless we can go someplace far enough away that he'll never find us."

"Then maybe we should go to Australia," Selene suggested. "France is only across the channel, after all. Or America."

"No. He'll expect that. We can find a small village, buy a house, and I'll cast a Fidelius Charm. He'll never be able to find us, then." Regulus squeezed Selene's hand. "Don't worry, love. We'll get out of this."

"Alright. I trust you. But before we leave, I want you to promise me one thing."

"Anything," Regulus said, and meant it.

"Promise me that no matter what, you'll stay with me."

"I promise."

Selene hugged Regulus, burying her head in his shoulder. "I love you," she told him, her voice muffled by his robes.

"I love you too." Regulus hugged her tight, holding on to her with all his strength. For the first time in his life, someone loved him unconditionally. It was a wonderful feeling, and he was never going to give it up.

"So, when are we leaving?" Selene asked, pulling away.

"As soon as possible. I already got all my things and took gold from my parents' Gingotts vault. Once your things are ready, we can go."

"Alright. I'll go pack, then. Are we Apparating?"

"Yes. I can't get a Portkey without the Dark Lord finding out somehow, and flying would take too long."

Selene left the room, and came back fifteen minutes later with two large trunks in her hands.

"Ready?" Regulus asked.

Selene looked around at her flat. She'd been living there for almost a year, ever since she graduated from Hogwarts and got a job at the shop below. She'd met Regulus not long after she moved in. He was a Hogwarts student in his seventh year, shopping for his mother on his Christmas break. She'd been smitten with him from the instant she saw him, even though he was nearly a year younger than her and obviously much too good for a poor orphan girl who barely managed to feed herself.

She had been delighted when he came back the next day, and when he asked her out a week later she agreed happily. She was only eighteen, and he was only seventeen, but Selene could see herself spending the rest of her life with Regulus- and he felt the same.

"I'm ready," Selene said certainly. She would happily follow Regulus to the ends of the earth.

"I love you," Regulus said again, taking Selene's hand. They stepped forward together, Apparating hand in hand into their new life.


	2. Chapter One

Saint Ansbert was in Rouen, France, close enough to the beach to be ideal but not so close that a tourist had ever stepped foot in the tiny village. The houses were nearly all at least a hundred years old, most of the roads were dirt, and nothing truly exciting had happened there in living memory.

The house at number 116 seemed nothing short of ordinary. It was a small cottage, just large enough for the family that lived there. There was a tiny front porch, a small and somewhat sagging woodshed off to the right of the house, and an apple tree growing next to the woodshed.

An old black and white cat named Adelaide roamed around the yard as she pleased, usually basking in the sun on the shed's roof in good weather and hogging a bed when it wasn't sunny. A single chicken laid eggs at the base of the apple tree, and clucked at the cat whenever she came too close.

The family who lived at number 116 was, so far as anyone knew, as ordinary as their house. Daniel Black was a tall, handsome man with black hair and a charming grin. His wife Cecelia was a pretty woman with copious amounts of pale blond hair and sharp grey eyes. Their nine year old daughter Evangeline was as fair skinned as her mother and with the same pale eyes, but she had her father's thick black hair and charming grin.

Daniel owned a small shop in the center of town that sold and rented movies and video games, and Cecelia helped him with the accounting when Evangeline was at school.

It seemed like the ideal existence, and indeed, Evy had never been unhappy with her life. Her grandmother lived in England, so Evy didn't get to see her as much as she would have liked, but other than that her life was nearly perfect.

The truth was, though, that the Blacks were not as ordinary as they seemed. Evy, for instance, could talk to snakes. She had been doing it for as long as she could remember. Their house was surrounded by the same small forest that had swallowed the rest of the town ages ago, so snakes were plentiful, and they always had something to say.

Yet another thing that wasn't ordinary about the Blacks was the way things seemed to happen around them, sometimes, that didn't happen around other people. A ceramic pitcher had not only levitated right off the display shelf in the living room, it had mended itself after falling to the floor and shattering one day. Daniel and Cecelia denied seeing the pitcher do any such thing, but Evy was certain that it had; she wasn't one to scoff at the unusual, and she never had been.

She _could_ talk to snakes, after all.

Proof that she had been right about the strange things that sometimes happened came on her tenth birthday. When she entered the kitchen, the only room her bedroom opened into, the dishes were washing themselves. After having a good stare, Evy went out into the living room, where a broom was sweeping a small pile of dirt into the dustpan- with no assistance from Cecelia whatsoever. Cecelia herself was bustling around the coffee table and humming as she placed Evy's birthday gifts on it.

"Mère," Evy said accusingly. "Why are the dishes doing themselves?"

Cecelia jumped, surprised, but when she turned around there was a big smile on her face. "Happy birthday, ma fille charmante! I did not expect you up so early."

"Mum. Que se produit?!"

"Why don't we wait until your father comes back," Cecelia said firmly, and before Evy could protest Daniel entered the room.

"Evy! You're awake- merveilleux. Your mother and I have something to tell you."

"She's already seen the dishes," Cecelia said. "And the broom."

"Ah. But that is only the beginning of what we can do, Evy. I-" Daniel began, before Cecelia cut him off.

"Why don't we all have breakfast first, and then we can explain? This isn't the sort of thing you want to rush, Daniel. We have to explain all of it, not just bits and pieces." She turned to Evy. "Be patient, and we will answer all your questions."

Evy scowled, but followed her mother back into the kitchen and sat down at the table. "Now, what would you like for breakfast?" Cecelia asked.

"Toast and scrambled eggs," Evy said immediately. It was the fastest thing she could think of to make.

Cecelia gave her a knowing look, and Daniel laughed. "It's your birthday, Evy. There's no reason not to have something special just because you want to rush. Besides," Cecelia said, relenting a little, "I can make it a lot faster than you're used to if I use magic, and I'll explain as I do it."

Evy sighed blissfully upon hearing the word magic. "I knew it," she whispered to herself. "I wouldn't mind pancakes," she added.

"Good choice." Daniel put his hand into his pocket and pulled out a long, thin piece of wood. "Accio," he muttered under his breath, and everything necessary for breakfast for four zoomed out of the cupboards and landed gently on the table.

"Is Grand-mère coming for my birthday?" Evy asked, gesturing at the fourth table setting.

"Yes. She should be arriving any minute, in fact…" Cecelia glanced out the window into the back yard for a reason Evy couldn't fathom before setting the frying pan on the stove. "I can make sausage and eggs as well, if you like," she offered.

"Yes, please!" Evy said enthusiastically.

Cecelia took her wand out of her jeans and flicked it at the cupboard. Ingredients jumped out, followed by measuring cups and mixing bowls when Cecelia flicked her wand a second and third time.

Twenty minutes later it was all done, but Selene still hadn't shown up. "Well, no sense in letting it get cold- go on, Evy. We'll explain it all as you eat."

It took Evy nearly fifteen minutes to finish a single small pancake, she was so amazed by the things her parents were telling her. People vanishing into thin air only to reappear a second later someplace else; real, honest to God dragons; there was even a magical sport called Quidditch, played on flying _broomsticks_, of all things.

Halfway through explaining how, exactly, the brooms stayed up in the air Cecelia broke off. "She's here!"

Evy scrambled up and stood on her tiptoes next to her mother, who was staring out the window at the back yard with a big smile on her face.

"Did she Apparate here?" Evy asked, excited. She pushed up the window, grunting when it got stuck halfway open. "I didn't even hear you! Grand-mère, that's amazing!"

Selene walked around to the front of the house and went inside, dodging the short little coffee table in the living room and coming into the kitchen. "Thank you, Evy," she said, chuckling. "Would you like your birthday present?"

"Sûr!"

"After breakfast," Cecelia said firmly. "Evy, finish your sausage. Selene, sit down, please. Would you like some eggs?"

"Oh... go on, then. I didn't want to Apparate all the way over here on a full stomach, so all I ate was a piece of toast, and I'm running out jam..."

"Well, you'll have to take home a jar of my raspberry jam then," Cecelia said firmly. "And I think I have one of blueberry you can take... Evy and Dan don't like the blueberry much, so I always have some left over, even though I don't buy that much. And grape, of course..."

"Bleck," Evy muttered. She loved blueberries in any form she could think of, and fresh grapes were a favorite, but blueberry and grape jelly both were just gross.

"Oh, be quiet," Cecelia said, and swatted at Evy's head. "And drink your orange juice."

"It has pulp in it!" Evy said. "I hate pulp."

"Fussy, fussy. I'm not going to strain it for you. If you're going to be fussy, do it yourself."

"Is there a spell for taking pulp out of orange juice?" Evy asked, curious. "Because there should be, it's gross."

"No, there isn't, and even if there was, you're not allowed to do magic out of school until you're of age." Selene said, shaking her head.

"I'll have to invent one, then," she said. "But where am I going to school? Where did you go, Dad? Beauxbatons?"

"Yes, I did, but that's not necessarily where you'll be going. We were actually thinking of moving back to England, for good."

"_What_?!" Evy stared at her father, shocked and outraged. "But all my friends are here!"

"You'll make new friends," Cecelia pointed out, pulling out a chair and sitting down. "And we have good reason. First of all, your grand-mère lives in England, and you always say you'd like to see her more. I don't have any family here since my Pappy died, and family is very important.

"Second, Beauxbatons is a good school, but Hogwarts is the best. You couldn't possibly get a better education, each House has a Quidditch team if you want to join, and there are quite a few other extracurricular activities you could do.

"Third, everyone here thinks we're muggles._Ordinary_. Wouldn't you like to live someplace where you don't have to worry about lying to people all the time?"

"Well… yeah," Evy admitted. "I'd feel terrible, not telling Jo-jo and Tomas about my magic… but I don't want to never see them again, either!"

"You can write," Selene said soothingly. "I'd love to be able to see you all the time. If you lived in England, it would be much easier. Apparating over long distances is hard, you know."

"No… but it makes sense," Evy said thoughtfully. "When am I starting at my new school?"

"Next year. You start when you're eleven, and you go for seven years. At the end of your second year you get to choose which classes you'd like to take in addition to your six basic classes, and at the end of your fifth year you get to drop the classes you aren't interested in continuing further. Third year is nice because you get to start visiting Hogsmeade on the weekends. I used to go there with my mates all the time."

"One thing you have to understand about magic, though, is that not everyone is good. Magic is a tool, just like anything else, and it can be used to do good things or bad." Dan told Evy seriously.

Evy frowned, thinking about what kind of things evil people could do with magic. "That could be mauvaise."

"Very bad," Selene agreed. "When I was eighteen and Regulus seventeen, there was a man who called himself Lord Voldemort. He was absolute, pure evil. Reggie was a Death Eater- one of You Know Who's henchmen- until he realized what exactly it was they were doing and how wrong it was.

"He stole something from You Know Who, something that was extremely important to him, and left. You Know Who killed him for it- not stealing whatever it was, because he didn't even realize it had been stolen, but for leaving. Death Eaters weren't allowed to quit.

"Reggie knew that You Know Who was going to go after him, so we moved to France. And then he went back to England- there was something he said he had to do, I'm not sure what. He never came back. I left Dan with my aunt and went looking for him, and eventually someone told me he'd been killed.

"You Know Who went to the Potter's house a year later. Lily and James were young, only a couple years older than Regulus- James was actually Sirius's best friend- and they had a son about Dan's age named Harry.

"You Know Who killed Lily and James, but when he tried to kill Harry the spell bounced back and he ended up- not dead, because whatever he'd done to himself had prevented him from being killed by normal means, but he wasn't exactly alive either. The wizarding world celebrated, thinking he was gone for good. All the murders, the living in fear, was over."

"And then, fourteen years later, he came back," Dan said. "I was in my fifth year at Beauxbatons when it happened. Mum told me what it was like last time, but even that didn't prepare me for it, and we weren't even in England. It was a hundred times worse over there. I can't even tell you… bridges collapsed, giants went through downs and just destroyed them, so many people died…"

"Didn't anyone do anything?" Evy interrupted, frustrated. "Form an army, do something?"

"People didn't believe it at first," Selene explained. "He was back for a whole year before the government admitted it, and that gave him time to make plans, gather allies, all sorts of things. And then the Minister resigned and someone else took over- I can't remember his name- and he ended up under the Imperious Curse.

"Harry Potter, who was the one who told everyone that Voldemort was back in the first place, finally killed him. Dan had just turned eighteen. Things changed pretty quick after that. Kingsley Shacklebolt became the Minister of Magic, Harry Potter took over the Auror department- the youngest person to have ever held the position- and the Dementors were removed from Azkaban."

"What are Dementors?" Evy asked, puzzled.

"Monsters," Dan said flatly. "They feed off happiness. Being around them makes you feel like killing yourself. There's no good emotions, nothing positive, just the bad. They make you relive the worst moments of your life over and over, as if you were there again. My life was hardly miserable, and I was shaking for hours afterwards the first time I saw a Dementor."

Evy shivered. "They sound horrible."

"They are," Selene said. "They allied themselves to Voldemort, because he promised them they could feed all they wanted. That was what kind of man he was."

"Why don't we talk about something else," Selene suggested. "She'll hear enough about Voldemort from other people."

"Hm… what would you like to know?" Dan asked Evy.

"How do people actually do magic? With sticks?"

"Wands," Cecelia corrected, laughing. "In order to do magic you need a wand. It is possible to do wandless magic, but only when you're very upset. The older you are and the better you are at controlling your magic, the less likely you are to have accidents."

"Oh. So when I talk to snakes, that's not magic?" Evy asked, frowning. "I mean, it doesn't feel like magic, but then again, how else would I be able to understand them?"

"Well… I guess the ability to speak Parseltongue is magic, in a way. Muggles can't do it… but then again, most wizards can't, either. It's a very rare gift. You should never tell anyone, though. Muggles will think you're possessed or something equally ridiculous, and witches and wizards will think it's a sign of a Dark Wizard. Stupid theory, but there you are... I just wish I knew how you became one. There's certainly no history of that sort of thing on _my_ side of the family..." Selene pursed her lips. "It must be your Black half, but Reggie never mentioned anything like that to me..."

"Well he wouldn't, would he, even if he did know about it? I mean, who was the most famous Parselmouth in a hundred years? You Know Who... and before him were countless others to give it a bad name. Any decent witch or wizard kept it a secret, and for good reason! We were persecuted enough in the old days without going around parading the fact that we were Parselmouths as well!" Cecelia snorted.

"That's stupid," Evy scoffed. "It's just an ability. It's like being really good at drawing, the way Tomas is, or being a good dancer like Joséphine."

"Salazar Slytherin was a Parselmouth, and he was nearly as bad as Voldemort," Dan reminded his mother. "It's been considered a bad thing for such a long time that people are unlikely to change their opinions now."

"So, it's magic but it isn't," Evy said thoughtfully. "What about magic that everyone can do? I need a wand, but what else? I refuse to do anything that includes me killing poor little animals."

"Don't worry, you won't have to. There might be things like beetle eyes in Potions class, but you buy everything you need." Cecelia smiled when Evy sighed in relief.

"In your first year, you'll have Transfiguration, Potions, Charms, Herbology, and Defense Against the Dark Arts. Oh, and History of Magic," Selene added.

Cecelia made a face, and Dan laughed. "You hated that class, didn't you?" he asked.

"It was taught by the ghost of an ancient, boring old man. You would have hated it too," Cecelia said flatly. "I couldn't even go to sleep, because the boy sitting next to me snored and it kept me awake. It was a _terrible_ class."

Evy laughed. "They let a ghost teach History?"

"Who better?" Cecelia asked with a shrug. "He certainly knew it, and he wasn't going to get married or quit. He lived for History of Magic- although perhaps that's not the best word."

Evy shook her head, laughing at her mother. "I can't even imagine being taught by a ghost."

"Well, by next year you won't have to," Dan pointed out. Evy frowned, and Cecelia distracted her by asking if everyone was finished with breakfast.

"Oh, oui," Evy said.

Cecelia waved her wand at the dishes and they flew into the sink, where they were met by the floating sponge. "I love being able to do that," she sighed. "I can't even tell you how hard it's been to do magic while you weren't looking. You're just too observant, Evy. I thought for sure you were going to make us explain everything when I fixed that vase that had fallen."

Evy shrugged. "I knew that I'd find out eventually. You've never lied to me except about magic- and there was no way you could possibly have missed the vase flying back onto the shelf. I figured you were just waiting until I was older."

"Well, you're older now," Dan said. "And speaking of older, it's your birthday. Shouldn't you be opening presents?"


End file.
